Christmas - what is it really all about?

Please, please watch this.


That's Christmas! from andy pearce on Vimeo.

Ask me if you want to know more.

Where does the time go?

It's 5pm on a Sunday afternoon and this is the first moment I've had to sit down this weekend. In fact, it's pretty much the first moment I've had to sit down in the past fortnight. Which is why I've been sadly lacking in updates. If you've been sat around waiting for me to write, I am sorry. But also, maybe you should get out more ;)

So two weeks. Two whole weeks as November's morphed into December. There's been musical drama, gingerbread, dining al fresco, animals, bowling, boules, more musical drama and plenty of eating. All of this has been finely balanced around work, church, sport and exercise. The television is feeling neglected.

So, musical drama. Both amateur and professional. The amateur came first, a couple of weeks ago, in the shape of Willy Russell's Blood Brothers. Our good friend Sarah had the lead role in the Riccarton Players' production of the musical and, although I'm biased, I have to say she did an awesome job. In fact pretty much everyone in the show was great. Most accents stayed distinctly in Merseyside (including Sarah's - a great feat given her strong Scottish lilt) which was an admirable achievement. A couple did waver geographically however. Of particular note were the cockney Australian policeman and the Welsh Geordie teacher. But really I shouldn't criticise, they still did a much better job that I could ever have done.

A couple of Wednesday's ago was the St John's gingerbread house event. This is two evenings where women in the church invite along friends. The primary aim of the evening is to build and decorate these hugely impressive gingerbread houses, but the other idea of the evening is evangelistic. There's a ten minute talk each evening you see, and so bringing friends along means they get to hear a very simple gospel presentation, an introductory talk. The events are always heavily subscribed. This year Joanne invited along two of her colleagues (although one had to pull out at the last minute with an injury). Please thank God, if you need something to add to your prayer list for us, that Joanne asked her friends along and that one of them made it, seemed to have a great evening, and most importantly, got to hear the talk. Please pray that it would be the foot in the door for future events and conversations.

Last weekend was another busy one (aren't they all?). On the Saturday we finally got to eat outside at our house, using our new table and chairs and the new barbecue. Very exciting. It was so nice to be able to eat outside at last, enjoying the warm weather and the garden. Most enjoyable. We had Blair & Amy from our bible study group round as well as Andrew & Lydia. They've just returned to NZ from London, and St Helen's, the church we went to before the barge (and where Joanne and I were married!) We didn't know Andrew, although we have common friends, but we met Lydia briefly when she arrived in the UK from here in Christchurch, just before I went to New York and then we left St Helen's for the barge. It was good to have a chance to catch up.

Last Sunday it was Joanne's work's social club's Christmas picnic. (It doesn't seem like a year since the last one.) This year it was held at Orana Wildlife Park. It's a place just past the airport here in Chch with quite a selection of animals. Lions, tigers, rhinos, giraffes, cheetahs, zebras, lemurs and meerkats are just a selection of what they've got on show, all in an open-range zoo kind of environment. I wish we had had more time to spend there as there was even more to see than we managed, but once we'd eaten and Santa had arrived by 'safari train' to give pressies to the kids we kind of ran out of time. I would happily go back though. Definitely a good day out.

Last week was a busy one at work too. Monday and Tuesday were spent off-site with the whole marketing department (of which I am part in geography and function, if not in job description) for a strategy meeting. It was two days away from the office working out how we were going to get done everything we want to get done in the next 18 months, including working out what we want to get done in that period. Phew! Monday evening we all had a bit of social time together too - ten-pin bowling (a disappointing 121 and 116 scored) followed by a meal out in Sumner. It was nice to spend some time with the team. I think in some ways the biggest difference between work here and work in the UK is that in London we'd go out for a quick drink at least once a week. People just seemed a lot more willing to socialise after work. Here, it gets to 5pm, and people are gone. I didn't realise I missed the socialising at first, but having the time with them all this week made me realise what we were missing as a team, if that makes sense.

On Wednesday I had another appointment with the sports physician about my shoulder. It seems he's happy it's improving enough that I don't need to go back to see him, which is positive. It's only taken six months, eh? And it's definitely still less than 100%. How fragile we are that just falling over can do so much damage.

On Friday I flew up to Auckland for the day for a meeting in Pukekohe with the North Island Sales Managers. A very productive meeting it was too. Just a shame I couldn't persuade the South Island Sales Managers that they needed the equivalent meeting. Friday evening is where the professional musical drama comes in. Lisa, who used to work with us in the marketing team, now has her own design business. We still put an awful lot of work her way and so are one of her biggest clients. To say thank you for the support she invited her key clients round to her offices on Friday followed by a trip to the Court Theatre to see La Cage aux Folles. It certainly is an interesting story but it was done brilliantly. I was so impressed with the production and I think everyone enjoyed it.

And then to complete the set of socialising with colleagues (it's like London buses, you wait for ages, and then you get three at once) last night was my work Christmas party. We had been told in advance it was a French theme but hadn't been told where it was or any more details. Some people made a great effort and got dressed up in costumes and everything. When the taxi dropped us off we found ourselves at the petanque club in Hagley Park. It turned out to be a great idea. Everyone seemed to have a go and join in - it was something no-one had really played before so everyone was at the same level - and it was really fun. My team (me, Joanne and Gabi) lost both of our games but it's not about the winning, eh? After the games we all headed into a marquee over to one side for a feed and a boogie. Much fun was had.

And now finally, to wrap things up, today after church Jess & Jimmy came back for lunch. I was a bit adventurous and so tried my hand at a beetroot risotto. It was really rather tasty. I'll definitely do that again. And everyone went back for seconds, so they weren't just saying it to be polite either! Jess & Jimmy are heading over to Bangladesh in February to get involved with some mission work over there so it was great to be able to catch up with them and hear the latest on their plans.

It's the final week of the Exploring Discipleship course this week so we'd appreciate prayer for that - that the social aspect of this week goes well, that we leaders are all able to answer the questions that might come up in the q&a session faithfully and humbly, and that the members would continue to be challenged by what they learn about living life as a follower and learner of Christ Jesus. Thank you :)

Ooh yeah, and congrats Pete & Cloudy on the birth of Oliver, Pete & Melissa on the birth of Emily, and Kris & Angie on the birth of Chloe (at least I think it is Chloe!). Everyone's at it, eh?

Country comes to town

I love three-day weekends. All weekends should be three-day weekends, I reckon. Unless they're four-day weekends, because that's even better. The week just gone was Canterbury Cup and Show week. It's a week full of important horse-racing and trotting race days that are traditionally surrounded by posh frocks and drinking heavily in the scorching sun, which overlaps the National A&P Show in the second half of the week. And then Friday is the provincial anniversary day for Canterbury which means we get a day off. Hence the three-day weekend.

And it's been a busy one. Joanne's not been to the A&P show before (I went last year with work) so I thought it might be nice to take her along on Friday. It gets pretty busy there on the Friday (the day the townies all go - whereas Wednesday and Thursday tend to be the business days when farmers mostly go) so we went along in the morning. We're glad we did too. It got mental around lunchtime. Absolutely heaving. Joanne almost couldn't make it to the strawberries and icecream stall it was that busy. You'll be pleased to hear that she fought her way over though and a potential fruit-and-frozen-dairy-combo catastrophe was averted.

There really is loads that goes on there. As well as the trade tents and carnival rides and food and farming machinery, there are animal competitions (biggest bull; curliest-horned ram; wooliest alpaca etc etc), axemen competitions, show-jumping, stunt horse-riding, sheepdog trials and even souped-up V8 tractor pulls. Dragstar tractors. I was really sorry I missed that. Oh, and OpShop played too.

To be honest, my first thought on seeing the huge bulls at the show was not to go and pat them for a photo opportunity as one Asian kid did. My first thought was also not to fulfill a desire to climb aboard and ride them. No-one at the show was silly enough to do this, at least I didn't witness anyone silly enough. This was saved for Saturday night and the International Rodeo that came to town. I've not been to a rodeo before. Rodeo-related opportunities in Grimsby, Coventry or London save a mechanical bull in the back room of a pub or at a Uni end-of-year ball are quite limited. It seemed like something to be able to tick off.

Arriving at the Westpac Arena yesterday evening the country had definitely come to town. Bus loads of folk adorned in check shirts, cowboy hats, denim and jeans spilled into the venue. You definitely got the feeling that many of them weren't dressed up. I was really looking forward to the whole event while was not so keen. I think she was just humouring me and was more keen to spend an evening with Ruth & Al who we were going along with. In the end though, I think she enjoyed it too, although she won't admit as much ;)

It really was quite a spectacle. It was quite Americanised, unsuprisingly, and Joanne compared it to a WWE event (where only half the competitors realise it's scripted!) but you really had to admire the skills and the courage (or stupidity) of these cowboys. There was bare-back bronc riding, saddled bronc riding and bull-riding for the men, and barrel-racing for the ladies. In the first two of these the cowboys are marked for technique and leg movements in time with the horse's bucking, or something. In the bull-riding you're not expected to display as much finesse and just holding on for eight seconds qualifies you for a score. Bull-riding. What a mental idea. Can you imagine the look on the rest of the cowboys' faces when, sitting round the campfire one night, one bored (and slightly mental) cowboy suggested they might all like to sit on the back of one of those bulls tomorrow and see who could hang on the longest.

In domestic matters, we finally bought a table and chairs set for the garden on Friday and I finally, finally put our barbeque together. If only the nor-wester would stop blowing we could actually make use of the garden. I still can't get used to a very strong wind with temperatures in the high twenties.

Completely out of my comfort zone

Last week I got to travel with work a bit again. Around this time of year, around the country, we organise lots of shareholder meetings where the farmers who are shareholders can come for a feed and a presentation from the CEO and the chairman about how the co-operative is going, what's happening in the global market, how the last year went and plans for going forward. Kind of a state of the union address. It is felt that us in the marketing department at head office (which I kind of am, as well as being kind of not) should go along to one of these shareholder meetings each each year to meet the farmers and see what goes on and stuff. This year I chose Oamaru.


Oamaru is about 3 hours south of Christchurch and is famous, at least in post-European settlement times, for its many heavily-carved and ornate limestone buildings. There's also a penguin colony just near the town but I didn't get time to go and check out the little fellas. I did get an hour or so of tourist-time though and I took the opportunity to head about 25 minutes south on State Highway 1 to see the Moeraki Boulders.

The boulders are mostly spherical, large stone boulders which lie partly submerged along a beach. Totally out of place, there are all sorts of weird and wonderful tales about how they got there. Of course there are the geological explanations but I think I prefer the one told to me by a farmer called Brod a few hours later over dinner at the shareholders meeting. His idea, completely without evidence, is that a Chinese junk, pre-European settlers, was wrecked on the coast at Moeraki and the boulders were the ship's ballast rocks that split into the sea.


The weekend just gone was definitely memorable. Joanne and I along with three other couples from church (Chris & Jacqui, Mark & Hannah and Dan & Katherine) went on a tramping weekend. To clarify, a tramping weekend is a walking weekend, rather than one spent hunting hobos. The plan was to drive about three hours or so north west of Christchurch, past Hanmer where we were last weekend to a little spot called Marble Hill, between Springs Junction and Maruia Springs. We'd then leave the cars and wander off into the woods to a little DOC hut on the edge of Lake Daniells. Which we did.

We were led to believe it was going to be an easy walk in, about 9km, about two or three hours or so, and for the first half this was true. But then it got a bit swampy and progress slowed. Then it got really muddy and progress definitely slowed.


But, after about about two and a half hours and a couple of scroggin stops we arrived at the hut, at the lake. And what a beautiful spot it was. A still lake reflecting the wooded mountains that surrounded it. Words cannot describe it.

I think it was shortly after arriving at the hut, while I sat dangling my feet in the icy cool water below the pontoon, that reality hit home. Here we were, in the middle of the wilderness, in a little wooden hut with no electricity. The closest I came to camping as a kid was spending a night in a tent in Mark or Darren's gardens where we could run indoors if the weather got too inclement. And I've not camped since then really. I am not sure three nights at Reading festival count, especially since we went back to Kate's mum's every morning for a shower and a fry-up. So, the bottom line is that this was all kind of new to me. I was just grateful that the others we were with were a lot more seasoned than me, the tramping virgin.

They took care of the food, knocking up a really substantial meal of couscous with salami, mushrooms and rehydrated veg in a tomato sauce over the little gas burners they'd taken along. These huts, you see, and the one we stayed in was supposedly a nice new one, don't have anything really. There are bunks, cold running water and a roof. And that's pretty much it. You take everything you need in, and everything you need back out again. Some people do four or five day tramps walking from hut to hut to hut, carrying all their food and clothing for five days with them. So one night in the comparative luxury of the Lake Daniells hut was nothing really. But it didn't feel like it to me. It was meant to be quite a popular track and hut, quite busy most weekends we'd heard, but we had the place to ourselves. Perhaps it was because it was election weekend. It was just so peaceful. The lake was so still and so inviting, but so cold following the unseasonal snowfall last week. I definitely wasn't brave enough to join Dan and Chris in the lake, fishing, up to their waists. Especially after I'd seen a gigantic eel swim on by.

And almost as soon as it began it was over. We woke Sunday morning, had a bit of brekkie, packed up, cleaned the hut of what mess we'd made, and headed back to the cars. A whole weekend in the bush and I only got bitten once by sandflies. Maybe there is something in the marmite myth after all.

On the way back to town we tret outselves. We stopped at Maruia Springs and had a good long soak in the thermal pools. Just what was needed. Even if the 'medicinal' black algae floating in the water looked like a cross between Harry Potter's dementers and the Nazgul. There truly is nothing like sitting neck-deep in a hot natural spring, surrounded by tree-covered misty mountains. I most heartily recommend it.

All in all, the weekend was brilliant. We got to know the others a whole lot better, in beautiful surroundings, and it's not a bad thing to be pushed beyond your comfort zone once in a while.

Japanese macaques

One of Joanne's colleagues, Kirsten, had a birthday last week and to celebrate she booked two holiday homes up in Hanmer and invited loads of people along. We were some of those people. In total I think there were about 16 or so of us between the two houses.

The weekend began on Friday evening with a nice tapas meal in a little cafe place in Hanmer and then continued with a brunch of pancakes on Saturday morning. A couple of hours spent relaxing in the thermal pools followed. There's something quite enjoyable about sitting in warm water with only your head exposed while cold winds blow around you and raindrops splash down onto the pool.

The weather cleared a bit in the afternoon and while Jo went back for a nanna-nap and the others lazed around a bit I decided to take a ride out into the country with my camera to see what I could find. I wish a photo could do justice of the scale of the Nuzziland countryside. I really don't think you can fully understand just how BIG everything is unless you're stood there, soaking it all up. It's just on a different scale. I remember when my dad was here earlier this year and was about to go on his South Island bus tour that I told him about this, that however many postcards you see, or shots on TV or shots in books, unless you're actually there, you cannot understand the sheer hugeness of it all. Once he stood at the foot of Mount Cook and floated along the Sounds he understood. Everytime I head out into the Nuzziland countryside I understand again.

Round every corner was a new photo to take, a new angle, a new way or seeing things lit. But driving along means you're limited to when you can stop. Especially when there is a police car behind you, as I had for a few kms yesterday! But when I could stop I did, and I headed along a few side roads to see what I could find too and got a few interesting photos, I think. I need time to look over them some more to work out if everything's worth keeping.

In the evening yesterday we all headed over to the other house for a big barbecue. It was one of those barbecues where there's way too much food and way too much alcohol. It was all going well until two of the women decided to take a kayak they found in the garage of the house down to the pond at the bottom of the garden. Bear in mind it was around 10-ish at that time. And they'd been drinking since way earlier. How no-one ended up going for a swim I could not tell you.

This morning began with a spot of brunch after cleaning the house up. We all headed into the town to a cafe for some food. I was sorely tempted by eggs benedict but the Highland FLing could my eye in the end. And what a good choice it was. A healthly bowlful of porridge sitting over a rhubarb compote, topped with bananas, brown sugar given the blowtorch treatment and a dollop of cream. That is how to eat porridge.

Next up, while some of the ladies went for a wander round the shops, the rest of us headed to the crazy golf course, or mini-golf as they call it here. The weather today was pretty spectacular and I don't think I've played crazy golf in a more spectacular setting - beautiful blue skies and snow-capped mountains in the background. It even beats that one in Great Yarmouth I played on during the boating holiday with the lads. But unlike Great Yarmouth, I didn't win. I didn't come second or third. I was definitely last. Well and truly last. It was embarrassing. At least I could claim a Holt victory though, supporting my wife's magnificent performance, ignoring the fact that she put me to shame.

Playing catch-up

Isn't it amazing how there is no time to write anything when you're busy? You're either doing something or are too tired after doing something to write about the something you've been doing.

Since I last wrote:

• The summer football league has started. In the three games we've played so far I think we've scored 2 and conceded 25 or more. I told you it was going to be difficult. I don't approve of ungraded football leagues.


• I've figured out I can access the company network from home via my work laptop and our wireless network meaning I can work from home when I need a day of peace and quiet to get on with something particular. It was my boss's idea too!


• I had another meeting to go to in Wellington and yet again didn't get further than the conference room of the golf club across the road from the airport. At least this time our plane took off and circled over the city so that Gabi could point out the sights for me.


• The new Exploring Discipleship course started. It was a great night and all seemed to go well. I was going to say it went smoothly but that would ignore the fact that Ryan was meant to do the talk, was ill and so I had to step in at late notice. Apart from that it all went smoothly. And was very encouraging.


• We had Kirsten who is one of Joanne's workmates over for dinner along with her husband the other Saturday along with Lisa & Steve and Lisa's brother who is in town from Sydney. (Roast pork, roast potato and kumara mix, broccoli & cauliflower cheese followed by chilli chocolate self-saucing pudding and icecream)



• I spent two days (getting back today actually) in Akaroa on a work conference. It was the same head office work conference that we had in Hanmer around the same time last year. It was the first time I've been to Akaroa and the sun's shone so it was good to get a bit of a sense of what everyone raves about. Sure, it's a nice little town (in the middle of an exploded volcano) with some French street names in line with its history but I still don't quite get why everyone thinks it's so amazing. The accommodation was better than sufficient, the conference venue was impressive, and the winery we went to for dinner last night was a lovely little spot.

This weekend we're going to Hanmer for the weekend. Kirsten (see above) has organised a whole group of us to go up there. I'm not sure the weather's going to be spectacular enough to do much outside but even in the rain the idea of relaxing in the thermal pools seems inviting right about now.

Black fingers

It's been one of those weekends where we didn't get to sit down for long. We bought some stain for our fence, some paint for the pergola, a lawnmower and a strimmer. I stained the wood on the pergola while Joanne finished the undercoat yesterday and then today we gave it a first coat of paint while I put together the lawnmover and strimmer. Oh and I took the ski racks off the car and rearranged the shed and garage a bit. I took a photo of Joanne painting this afternoon in her overalls but she won't let me post it. We still have to give the pergola another coat of paint sometime and give the wood bits another coat of stain too. And do something about staining the fence - all 175m² of it.

It'll be so good when we're able to sit and enjoy the garden, but at least if we get all this stuff in the spring it will all be ready for the summer. Oh, and we have a barbecue now too. I'm still not convinced of the benefits of a gas grill oven thing outside but I guess I'll learn. I've been brought up on charcoal and it's hard to get the smoke out of my eyes.

My talk seemed to go well the other week by the way. I got some encouraging feedback and people did seem challenged by what I had to say. Thank you for your prayers.

I had a full-year appraisal on Friday at work. It seemd to go well too. Lots of encouraging words and appreciative words about my work in the past fourteen months. It's nice to be valued, I guess.

The summer football league starts on Tuesday. It's going to be interesting to see how we do. The summer league is not graded so you get players from all levels playing. I don't expect to score quite as many as I did in the winter league.